The Evasive Guru and the Errant Wife

Abstract

The chapter discusses a conflict within the Śaiva Siddhānta tradition in what is present-day Tamil Nadu. The conflict concerned was started in the 1860s by an attack of Arumuga Navalar, a Śaivite scholar, who represented a form of religious neo-traditionalism, on Ramalinga Swamigal, a modern Śaiva poet and self-styled siddha. The struggle revolved around the definition of the Śaivite canon. Navalar was upset by Ramalinga’s success with the songs he had composed, a collection of which was published in 1867 under the name Tiruvaruṭpā. Navalar, highly critical of extant practices, especially of those of lower-caste people, opposed the acceptance of Ramalinga and his songs as being on par with those of the earlier poet-saints. The author places this conflict in the context of changes of earlier polemical literary traditions regarding the attitude to the past. The author sees Navalar as pursuing a deliberate ‘Protestantization’ of Śaivism, laying down new lines of exclusion and inclusion.